Harvard Law School students Michael Admirand ’10, Cori Crider ’06, and Jacob Howard ’09 each received the Gary Bellow Public Service Award for their commitment to public interest and social justice work at an award ceremony on
April 9.

Admirand was committed to public service from the beginning of his time at HLS. He spent his first summer in Jackson, Miss., working on civil rights cases and criminal defense, including a cert petition to the U.S. Supreme Court and work for one of the Jena 6. He spent his second summer working at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Ga., representing death row clients and doing criminal justice reform work. He has participated in the Criminal Justice Institute, where he continues his work on pro bono criminal defense cases. Next fall, he has accepted a position at the Capital Appeals Project in New Orleans, La.

Crider is the legal director for Reprieve, a legal services and advocacy organization that works around the world for individuals the facing death penalty or indefinite detention. She joined Reprieve in 2006, supported by a human rights fellowship from HLS and now manages all aspects of Reprieve’s secret prisons litigation, including work for clients held at Guantánamo Bay and Bagram. During law school, she was active in the HLS Human Rights Program and worked on several projects, including: monitoring U.N. human rights bodies in Geneva; investigating and reporting on dams that harmed indigenous populations in Cambodia; and helping to sue corporations for exploitative and abusive practices in Nigeria and South Africa.

During law school, Howard worked with the HLS Advocates, and was a leading member of the Prison Legal Assistance Project, serving as the organization’s president during his third year. He spent both of his summers in the Deep South, working for a civil rights and criminal defense attorney in Jackson, Miss., during the first summer, and subsequently on prison reform and death penalty cases at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Ga. He also participated in the Criminal Justice Institute clinical program. Upon completion of a clerkship in Montgomery, Ala., next year, he will serve as an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow.

The Gary Bellow Public Service Award is conferred in honor of the late Harvard Law School Professor Gary Bellow, founder and former faculty director of the Clinical Program, who died on April 13, 2000. The award was created by students in 2001 to honor Professor Bellow. Each year, students, alumni and faculty nominate candidates, and the student body selects the winners.

— Jenny Lackey